My bare feet padded along the dusty, rocky road. I glanced over to the kids playing in the rice field, my mirror-coated eyes lingering over the rough-and-tumble play. They splash around, uprooting their parents’ rice plants and giggling as they lob mud balls at each other.

*scoff*

So boring.

My ears perk up to a whistle of wind.

Just need to move one of my feet to the left, forming a cracked-up crater from the force of the chakra in my footwork compacting the ground, and then propel. I narrowly avoid the falling sword.

I turn my horizontal movement into a roll, covering myself with plates of pointed, reflective glass. The 5 meter-in-diameter (or ~15 feet in diameter) rolling tank of silvered, spike-covered glass races off after the ninja. The enemy grimaced at the sounds of the glass of my war machine grating together.

Sad.

It didn't throw him off despite his annoyance.

*shink!*

A hole of bright light opens in the darkness of my rolling behemoth, the glittering dust I used to suspend myself no longer the only light within the pitch black.

Yawning heavily, I was forced to tilt my body out of the way of the sword stabbing through my war jutsu like butter. Not only that, but I had to wiggle like a worm as the sword stabbed, not the once, but instead 50 times in the next three seconds.

How droll.

Payback time.

Cracks appeared on the skin around my eyes, the reflective parts seeming to catch light, like a nerd’s glasses in the light of inspiration, in the darkness of my war jutsu. I balled up, tensing as the rolling tank of glass around me exploded like an oversized tank.

My attacker’s brown, almost black, eyes widened in a rare expression of surprise. He used the substitution jutsu ten times in a row along with an Earth-style jutsu with a wall as thick as a Daimyo’s mansion and 10 times as tall. He quickly ran out of Chakra trying to escape me.

And still, despite his efforts, he sustained injuries I would have thought fatal... if I didn’t know he has more lives than a cat.

From an unknown source, chakra flowed into the cockroach-like ninja, filling him back up.

A quick succession of hand seals saw him healed. I noticed a succession of hand seals while he sunk under the earth to obfuscate his direction against my bombardment of oversized splinters.

A false corpse surrounded by a storm of fire grew from the dusty road right below me, grabbing my ankle to flip me parallel to the ground.

He swung his upswinging knee up.

*snap*

Impressive.

He broke my back.

Blood sprayed out my mouth, so with a simple push of Wind chakra, I sent it into his face on a gust of wind. He gathered up my blood in his palm with ease, before dodging shoddy glass spears from my hand with a cartwheel and sending the liquid back to me with the same motion.

It became a glob of white-hot fire that left imprints in my vision despite the natural resistance.

I knew he used hand seals I could have copied, but they were disappointingly hidden by the annoyingly bright fire. He probably did that on purpose.

And my stomach rumbled because I still have not gotten to my favorite restaurant for ramen.

“Man... what a drag...” I groaned.

The man smirked knowingly, before cutting open his arms to send a dragon’s worth of fire at me.

I hopped and skipped around the fields like a rabbit, covering vast distances as the Kage-level Ninja absolutely demolished the entire set of farmland around us. Rice went up in flames as the wind behind my speeding form cut the rice up like so much chaff.

The hairs on my neck raised, my medical ninjutsu preparations paying off and allowing me to sense the vibrations of the earth like a spider.

A towering behemoth of earth was ripped out of the earth by the force of nature behind me with nothing but chakra and his bare hands. I narrowly use my mirror creation to blast myself out of the way like a rocket, only to find myself and the land around me covered in a light shadow.

My reflective eyes glance up, the perpetual boredom within my eyes replaced, for once, by shock.

A vast cliff of a hand outstretched over me and my surroundings, blotting out the sun with its jagged, rock-encrusted outline. It hurtled down with ridiculous speed for its ridiculous size like a meteor of cataclysmic proportions.

Sped by panic, my hands spun around in a variety of hand seals that I had created myself. Hand seals complicated even for me that created hand seals within the Mirror World I had access to, which created hand seals in a world within the Mirror World, and ad infinitum. Dull glass eyes flick around as I focused on each shard of chakra, fitting them together like a high-stakes puzzle.

Which are not boring.

Layers grew upon layers of reflective glass around me like the formation of a house-sized shiny pearl. They screeched together in an annoying nails-against-chalkboard sound as they grow into place. I stomped my tiny foot down on a glass shard, blood pouring from it to write summoning calligraphy into the ground.

*poof*

My only slightly boring teammate appeared in a cloud of smoke, only to get thoughts shoved into his head by genjutsu.

A cliff is falling on us. Dying would be so boring, so pull your weight.

His nine black eyes stared at me accusingly. The number of his eyes stands for longevity, which should help. Or at least, that’s what I pray for with poor posture because doing it correctly for my ancestors would increase their expectations of me.

And I don’t want that.

Too much work.

Glowing white circles appeared in the center eye of Ajax, my summon.

A second has passed since I summoned him.

He pranced around with his eight legs, funneling chakra into a glowing ball of unparalleled density before passing it onto me so I could activate my finishing jutsu.

My bubble of glass morphed into a mirror the size of the entire behemoth that the attacker had summoned, fueled by the immense chakra reserves of both me and Ajax.

Two seconds have passed.

And impact.

Utter silence.

The earthen behemoth was swallowed by my superior jutsu.

A sword was held against my throat threateningly. I looked down to the cold steel, and then back to the war-hardened old man holding it.

“Fuck.”

He sheathed it and we jumped back at the standard distance for formality.

We bowed to each other.

“Thank you for your guidance, Uncle,” came my cold, eerily high voice.

“This Uncle is humbled that you appreciate his guidance,” he gruffly rasped out.

“Come with me,” he demanded, and we left the corpses behind.

I trailed behind his baggy kimono until we finally made it to a public bench in a park. The chakra plumes of the less successful child Ninjas were sprinkled throughout the area, as they prepared to kill me if I did something as exhausting as betray him.

“So,” he started off amicably, “Which one?”

Immediately, I leapt to my feet. My finger aimed directly at the peaceful waters.

“Perfect. Come out 13L0017,” he said peacefully out to across the windswept, light green grass, the idyllic pond trembling from his chakra-infused words. A light smile graced his face as he gestured to the child disguised in the ponds with a wave of his aged hand.

The contented emotion on his face never failed to set shivers up my back when it surfaced.

The idyllic pond turned a bloody shade of red, which coalesced into a spiky mane of scarlet hair. A girl fixed her large glasses, temporarily blinding me and Uncle with the refraction, as she strode through the blood-drenched mud towards us.

She knelt before Uncle, dark grey eyes staring into the ground.

“You did such a good job, 1310017. Your reward is being next to me,” he said contentedly.

She stood up, sitting next to Uncle on the park bench. He took out a hairbrush from his robe to start taming her wild hair.

“I am deeply disappointed you were found in the first place, but-” he tugged at a tangle in her roughly, “- I will overlook your revolting flaws for now. 6LASSY-3Y317, who is next?”

I limply pointed at a chubby kid, who teleported in front of Uncle in a kneeling position.

“Of all under me, you are the worst. You are nothing but trash,” spat out Uncle venomously.

*shink*

The kid’s cherubic face rolled across the ground.

“Now. The rest of you Numbered... go back to work.” He clapped his hands, and they all left by jutsu that I filed away in my mind for future study.

“Now,” he stated, stomping on the ground and opening the entrance to his home. A loud rumble shook the ground as earth rearranged.

So uninspired... and so boring.

“Follow me,” he finished his statement after the hole in the ground stopped shifting.

All three of us blur down the steps, the earth rearranging to close up behind us again.

The fact that Uncle could kill me at any moment in this talisman booby-trapped pit of his made me feel the cold touch of the Shinigami against my neck.

I took a shallow, shuddering breath to calm myself.

“Don’t tell you’re afraid of the dark, are you?~” he said, oddly musical.

“No Uncle,” I said blandly.

“Of course not. It’s absolutely preposterous, the concept. I guess I am growing senile in my old age. My protégé would never be anxious around his dear old Uncle,” he said to me, 130017 completely forgotten in the corner.

He reached over and pinched my cheek with enough force to crush the reinforced heads of most ninjas. It only bruised my skin, though it did give him a firm enough grip to pull me close to his suddenly furious face.

“Imagine if I sent you on an infiltration mission and you showed anxiety like that?! You would dare humiliate your Uncle like that with such poor control over your expressions?!” he said. His words still managed to sound like screams despite his seemingly calm delivery.

He tossed me away to the ground with enough force to crater the ground.

I scooted along the ground, tilling the dirt until I stopped at the end of the cube hideout.

Such a drag. Literally.

I got up, not brushing off the dirt, so it didn’t seem like I was brushing off the physical marks of his punishment. For the same reason, I avoided healing the swelling on my face. He would get... violent... if I did that.

He’s boring like that.

“You both are growing weak here, fending off against the same methods of attack. I tire of your leeching,” he started.

Here? As in... the Hidden Village.

“So I am sending you away to get more useful. You both will be enrolled in the Academy for Magics, Demonics and Altogether Eldritch Vessels. You must infiltrate it successfully, avoiding the ire of the Immortals that teach it. Or you will make Uncle very mad, which would be both of your maggots’ fault, and you would deserve to be squashed, understood?”

“Yes Uncle,” we chorused.

“Now, you will need to leave our world to get to it, and I have secured transportation for you both... so be thankful,” he ended with a whisper.

Killing intent turned the air a turgid red. It was so heavy it drew blood from both our necks.

“We thank you sincerely from the depths of our heart and wish we could grovel at your feet in our appreciation,” we chorused fervently.

There is a high bounty on a Torment that escaped the pursuit of the Magical Guardians and is believed to have killed a member of that organization. you find that one”

Torment? Magical Guardians?

My eyes narrowed in annoyance. I have no idea what those are, and I can’t ask for elaboration or he might make an example of one of my family members at random.

He’s an ass like that.

I’ll have to see if they have any scrolls available on the history of the Talismanic World.

I am... only slightly... looking forward to going there. They have so many talismans implemented into their daily life style it’s insane. How many boring bookworms do they have in their dimension?!

I look to my coworker and find her excitement to be leaking out through her expression too.

“Before you pack up your items, how long has it been since you have eaten?”

“2 weeks,” we say at the same time.

“Good. You may have ramen now. You need to put on the pounds to blend in with the others.”

Our eyes sparkle with happiness and we leave to get some delicious ramen in our bodies, thin as rakes we were.